Dying Light
by MoonChild2308
Summary: I was a normal girl, a Whovian, until one day a weeping angel touched me and sent me into the Doctor's parallel universe. Now my name is Delphine Greentree and I'm travelling around with the Doctor. I'm not sure why I'm here and strange things keep happening to me, but maybe this is the way things are meant to be... 10/OC
1. 1: This Is Not Funny

So here I am with a new Doctor Who fanfiction! I'm really excited about this! This should get updated at a fairly decent pace because I work at an old folks home now where I don't do anything but sit at the front desk on weekends and occasionally answer the phone and keep the few elderly who aren't allowed outside from escaping. Because we're located in front of a highway. Brilliant idea. Anyway, thanks to TheGirlWhoImagined for being so awesome and fantastic and helping me out enormously with this. Her story, Fate Is Not The Boss Of Me, is absolutely phenomenal and you should go check it out when you're done reviewing mine :D Anyway, I promised myself I wouldn't ramble on here so onto the story!

Oh, and as a note, the first episode I'm using for the story is Army of Ghosts. I'm not too sure on when in the year that episode takes place so I'm going with a best guest scenario.

**Disclaimer**:I do not own Doctor Who or any of its affiliated characters, unfortunately, but I do own Arianna and Delphine and the plot of this story.

Chapter 1

This Is Not Funny

_It was amazing and terrifying all at the same time. Astonishing, stupendous, extraordinary, unbelievable, harrowing, horrifying, daunting, frightening… I couldn't decide what to label it. Could it be labeled? Or was it too great for that?_

_The Untempered Schism. What every young Time Lord was made to stare into, our initiation._

_And I stared into it. Or…maybe it stared into me. The somber colors of the time vortex swirling around inside that ring, boring through my eyes into the deepest recesses of my mind. It was scary. I had heard stories of the ones who went mad after staring into the Untempered Schism, some with their mind so broken from the force of the time vortex that they didn't even know who they were anymore. I had heard of the Master as well, he who claimed to hear drums in his head after this ordeal. Would I end up like one of them? Would I end up like so many others, running away from it for the rest of their lives? I didn't want to be broken._

_Suddenly the ground shook, almost breaking me from my schism-induced reverie. I was vaguely aware of the guards on either side of me looking around, wondering what was going on. The planet quaked once more, but this time my balance failed me and, my eyes still locked on the Untempered Schism, I stumbled forward, nearly falling to my knees. I caught myself, managing to stay upright, while the guards behind me, from what I could hear, weren't so lucky. Knocked to the ground, they made no attempt to retrieve me from my new place barely two feet from the face of the vortex._

_I couldn't look away. I tried to pull my eyes from it but it had a hold on me. As if it was calling my name, I was drawn to it._

_When another tremor hit the planet, I couldn't stop myself. I found myself tumbling into the Untempered Schism. The last thing I was aware of was my voice, screaming in pain as the forces of the time vortex raked through my mind._

I was yanked out of focus by the blaring sound of the catchy "Good Morning" tune playing on my cell phone, alerting me of the time. I blinked, my eyes sore from staring at the computer screen for the last hour, and leaned back. I stretched, cracking my back on the chair. Briefly glancing at my phone, I tapped the dismiss button on my Droid. Almost time for work.

~X~

My name is Arianna Grey and this is my life. At least, it was. It _was_ my name, and it _was_ my life. See what I did there? Past tense. As in not anymore. But, right then and there, I didn't know that. Sometimes I look back and think "What if I hadn't gone to work that day?" and "What if things had stayed the same?" Things might have been different. Sometimes I wish they had been different, that things had stayed the same and I'm not where I am right now. That I could have stayed happy little… Okay, not so happy little Arianna Grey.

But we'll get to that.

~X~

From my bedroom I could hear my Doctor Who DVD playing in the living room. Not that that was any great feat. Our apartment was small so it took all of five steps to move from the living room to my room. I found when I was trying to work on my Doctor Who fanfiction it helped to have Doctor Who playing on the television. It was on our TV most of the time anyway, because Lily, my best friend room mate, was as much of a Whovian as I was.

I turned off the DVD player and the TV, much to my disappointment, once I had finished tying my shoes and collected my bag for work. Shutting off the lights in the apartment, I went to leave. My phone buzzed in my pocket as I walked out the front door.

Crossing my fingers and hoping it was Lily annoying me before work, I checked my phone and frowned. Nope, not Lily; my mother.

_Your bills are piling up and it's becoming a bother. Do something about it._

Nice to hear from you too, Mom.

I'm just going to ignore it. If I ignore my problems, then they'll go away. That's how life works. At least that's how it should work.

The café I worked at was halfway across town but I didn't have a car to get me there so I walked everyday. I was terrible at finding my way around, even in a town I had lived in for forever, so I took the same way there everyday too.

"Damn," I groaned to myself when I was about halfway to the café. I had forgotten they were starting construction on Madison Avenue, which means I was going to have to detour my way to work. Today sucked.

Turning down the next alley, I came out on a street I was familiar with but I hardly ever used. As I walked along down the sidewalk, something across the street caught my eye. A statue, which to a normal person wouldn't be strange at all. Ever since I saw the episode Blink, with the weeping angels, however many years ago that was, I haven't been able to look at a statue the same way.

But this one in particular unnerved me. It looked too much like a weeping angel for my comfort.

Oh, who was I kidding? I didn't live in the Who universe. There was no Doctor to come whisk me away from my terrible life and make things amazing. And, therefore, there were no weeping angels. Hell, it was probably some twisted sculptor man who knew what weeping angels were. For all I knew this demented man had planted a camera inside the statue to watch as Whovians freaked out and ran at the sight of it.

That's something I would probably do. Maybe I should get that guy's number. I could freak Lily the hell out. Did I mention that was the purpose of my entire life basically? What can I say? I'm going to hell.

Deciding to ignore the statue altogether, like I do with most of my problems, I kept walking. But I didn't get very far when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stiffen. Calm down, Arianna, there's no way in hell that a statue is going to come off its stand and kill you. With my luck, it's probably just some crazy axe murderer come to chop off my head because I look like his dead wife. And now I'm realizing that I watch way too much Criminal Minds. Against my better judgment that told me the statue would still be there, I glanced back just to double check.

But it was gone.

Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, I'm going to die.

No, no, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I won't die. Maybe I'm just going completely and utterly insane and I imagined that there was a statue there. That's gotta be it. Not that I'm rooting for insanity here or anything, but I think it was the better of the two options. I took a deep breath and turned back around, intent on putting it out of my head and going to work.

I found myself face to face with the statue, the weeping angel, baring its teeth and claws at me. I screamed and stepped backwards, half expecting someone to come and see what the fuss was about. Of course, as this was my life, no one came.

I stared at it, refusing to blink. I wasn't looking to die today. What in the hell was a weeping angel doing in my totally non-fiction universe? It didn't belong here.

A thought dawned on me and I found myself chuckling after that moment of sheer panic. "This isn't Doctor Who," I said out loud, though whether I was trying to convince the angel in front of me or myself I wasn't sure. "Weeping angels don't exist here. But you know what we do have? Jackass friends who pull one too many pranks, that's what!" I had convinced myself that Lily was pulling one of her idiotic pranks, intent on making me late for work. "Okay, Lily, jokes over. I get it. Real funny. I'm so gonna get fired for being late." Nothing happened. No one came out of hiding and the so-called weeping angel didn't so much as budge an inch. "Lily, come on… Oh, of course. It's a weeping angel. It can't move if I'm looking at it. Let me just close my eyes and then maybe you'll stop acting like a dipshit."

So I closed my eyes.

~X~

When I reopened my eyes, I was somewhere else. I wasn't outside anymore. There was no weeping angel standing in front of me.

Did that mean I didn't have to go to work?

Wow, Arianna, way to focus on the important things. Now where the hell am I?

I had no idea where I was but I knew I was laying down, since it seemed I was staring at a ceiling. An ugly, stained and slightly cracked ceiling at that. The ceiling in my apartment wasn't the prettiest thing in the world but it wasn't this bad. Which means I wasn't home. And unless they randomly added a new addition to the café within the last twelve hours, I wasn't at work either.

"You awake, Delphy?

I sat up and turned to the left as a girl walked into the room I was in, wherever that was. She looked at me with one of the widest smiles I've ever seen in my life and skipped, seriously skipped, over to the side of the bed. "Delphine?" she questioned again. Was she talking to me? That's not my name. "Earth to Delphine Greentree! Are you in there?"

Delphine Greentree? But that was… No, it couldn't be. That was the name I gave my OC for my Doctor Who fanfiction. But that couldn't be right. My name was Arianna Grey, not Delphine Greentree. And who in tarnation was this girl?

Short blonde hair, green eyes, annoyingly bouncy behavior… Holy mother of fudge. If I'm right, and I really hope I'm not, then she would be Delphine's best friend, Lola Greentree.

That was when I started looking around the room I was in. It was a long room, with six beds, three on each side, and small shabby dresses next to each one. An assortment of stuffed animals were strewn across a couple of the beds. A dusty mirror hung on the wall not far from me. I recognized it as the orphanage Delphine was raised in. Greentree Orphanage. Everything was exactly as I had pictured it when I was coming up with my fanfiction.

I was apparently now named Delphine Greentree, living in Greentree Orphanage, with my, or her, best friend, Lola. What did that all mean? Surely I was still Arianna. I still looked like Arianna.

Or did I?

I shot up from the bed I was in and, trying to keep my shaking to a minimum, slowly walked over to the mirror on the wall.

Delphine looked back at me.

No longer was I the ginger girl with strange eyes. Now? Now I was almost the exact opposite of me. My short coppery hair was replaced with long, layered dark brown tresses and bangs that swooped over my forehead to the right. The front section of my new hair had been dyed a vibrant turquoise color. My eyes had originally been two different colors. They were still the same colors, but my left eye was now violet and my right eye a light blue, instead of vice versa. The Arianna version of me had been a bit curvier, with a bit of a baby face. This Delphine version of me was thin, although it did appear that if I put on some weight I might be able to keep the shape I was used to. I still had the same ivory skin and the same beauty mark underneath my right eye. My clothes consisted of holey pale denim jeans, a black t-shirt and blue converse. Turning my back to the mirror, I pulled the collar of my shirt down over my left shoulder, turning my head to see the tattoo I had given Delphine that read _Do not go gentle into that dark night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

I could feel my heart racing, threatening to beat out of my chest, and my breath was coming in shallow gasps. In essence, I was freaking out.

I remember I was walking to work. I was going to my stupid job at the stupid café and there was a detour. And I saw a weeping angel. Or I thought I did. It was just Lily playing a prank on me. Wasn't it? What if it wasn't? What if that had been a real weeping angel? A real weeping angel and I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes and it touched me and apparently sent me to some parallel universe where I have become my fanfiction character.

Either that or I'm lying in some hospital in a coma having really vivid dreams about being Delphine. Pinching my arm to wake myself up, I winced. Nope. That hurt so definitely not a coma.

Which meant this was real life and a real live weeping angel sent me to a parallel dimension where apparently my fanfiction was reality. Did that mean the Doctor was here?

Did that mean I had to start calling myself Delphine? More than likely. Lola might ship me off to the loony bin if I started referring to myself as Arianna. Even though I am Arianna. Or am I Delphine now?

Fuck, life had become confusing.

"Delphy, are you feeling okay?" I zoned back in as Lola gave me a concerned, questioning look.

Right. Whatever happened, I was Delphine now. Delphine had to act a certain way, and Lola would notice if I did something out of the ordinary. Good thing Delphine was beginning to turn into a Mary Sue and I'm 99% positive she and I are basically the same person, minus the whole appearance thing. "Yeah, Lo. Why wouldn't I be?" I replied, trying not to make a face at my new voice. I was English now. I mean, of course I'm English. I'm in my Doctor Who fanfiction where everyone is English so naturally I made my OC English too. That's going to take some getting used to.

She seemed to accept it well enough and smiled, plopping down on the bed next to mine, her bed. "Because you weren't feeling good earlier and took a nap. I came up to check on you."

"Oh, right, yeah." I sat down on the end Delphine's bed. I suppose I should probably start calling it my bed. I sat down on _my_ bed. Nope, that was still weird. "Sorry, I'm just a little bit out of it. I had a dream that I was living in a different universe, in a different body, and it's got me a little disoriented." Her eyebrow went up at that but she laughed. Good, so she didn't think I was insane. Maybe I could use the opportunity to find out some information. "What's the date?"

Never taking the cheery smile off her face, Lola obliged. "March 17, 2007."

I nodded. Not only did I travel to a parallel universe but I also went back in time. Realistically, I should only be thirteen years old. But I made Delphine nineteen, and that's the age I was as Arianna, so I think I'll stick with that. "And have I gone to work yet?"

"You call pick pocketing people your work?" That only made Lola laugh harder. She had never frowned upon my line of work but always found it funny when I tried to refer to it as my life career. "Nah, you haven't been out yet. You said you were going to head out after your nap if you were feeling up to it."

"Thanks, Lola. That helped a lot," I said, standing up. "I think I'm feeling okay now so I'm going to go do what I do best."

That was a lie of course. Delphine might have been created to know how to pick pocket people for a living but Arianna never stole a thing in her entire life. But I needed the opportunity to get outside and get some air, see what I remembered. That and, if I was going to be stuck here in this body and this universe, I needed to learn how to pick pocket people. Delphine had no creditable skills and was never able to find a real job. As an orphan, she hadn't had much time for education, outside of basic schooling, and had been thieving for as long as she could remember. She was me now but I don't think I was going to be as great at it as she was. Man, all these she's and I's were giving me a headache.

My name is Delphine Greentree. I am a pick pocket living in the Greentree Orphanage in London, England. I am an English girl with a big fancy English accent. I used to live in a different universe until a weeping angel sent me here to…

To a universe where I'm living as an OC from a Doctor Who story.

A Doctor Who story.

Doctor Who.

I stopped walking and looked up, searching the London skyline for something familiar. When my eyes finally settled on it, I burst into a grin. Torchwood London. It was there, meaning that I really was in a parallel universe where Doctor Who was a real thing. And it was still standing, meaning the Battle at Canary Wharf hadn't happened yet.

I could meet the Doctor.

~X~

"I hit the gold mine, Lola," I shot a sly grin at the blonde laying on her bed. "My friend Patrick here was walking around with two hundred buckaroonies in his wallet." I waved the man's ID in the air, and then tossed it in the pile of other IDs on my bed beside me. "All in all, about four hundred pounds yesterday."

Lola snorted and sat up, looking at the wad of cash in my hands. "With that kind of money you could buy me a puppy. Or get yourself a normal hair color."

"Lola, you're lolo." I lifted up the end of my mattress and hid my stash under it, with the rest of my money. "For your information I like my hair the way it is. And what would you do with a puppy? You can hardly take care of yourself."

Pouting, she stood up. "Fine, be that way. I don't want your thief money anyway. I'm gonna go find something to eat. See you later, boo."

I couldn't help but shake my head and laugh as she walked out of the room. I had been living in this universe, in my new body, for two weeks now, and I was finally starting to fit in. I had gotten the hang on pick pocketing finally to the point where I was so good at it I felt guilty. Police here didn't care about pick pockets, especially since people like dear old Patrick were walking around with hundreds of dollars. Or pounds. Whatever. I lived in America for nineteen years of my life. Getting used to this whole pound thing was something that was taking some time. But I made money. I had to if I was going to be living here until I found the Doctor. And I was going to find him, one way or another.

I had also adopted Delphine as who I was going be from then on. Sure, I was still used to being Arianna and sometimes people would call my name, my new name, and I wouldn't realize they were talking to me. But Delphine was the new me. People would find it weird if I were to suddenly insist on being called Arianna. Besides, maybe this was my chance. Too many nights I had lied awake at night, thinking of Doctor Who, and wishing that somehow I could be here instead of in my life. My life sucked. I lived in a shabby apartment I could hardly afford, worked at a café where I had to waitress on roller skates, and my parents hated my existence. This was my chance to start over, to be a new me, and I was going to take it.

Of course, Delphine's life wasn't all that great either. She had no family and had been living in the Greentree Orphanage for as long as she could remember. Delphine was the only name she had ever known and had been given the last name Greentree because she hadn't had one, so, like Lola, she had adopted the name of the orphanage. She was a pick pocket because no one wanted to hire her for a real job and because she had started early on as a way to make money as a kid. Lola was her first and basically only friend.

But as much as Delphine's life sucked, it was still better than what mine had been and so I was more than happy to be here. After all, I was going to become the Doctor's companion. I was determined to. It would be a thing.

I had found out that I was close to the Army of Ghosts episode of the show now. The ghosts had started appearing worldwide about a month before I got here. That meant in about two weeks or so the Doctor would be showing up. I just had to wait.

Pulling my cell phone out of my jeans, I checked the time. 12:30, lunch time. Time to head out.

~X~

Hair pulled up and thumbs hooked into my belt loops, I walked down the sidewalk slowly, keeping my eye out for easy targets. Not that I couldn't pick pocket from just about anybody, as long as they had a wallet, but I wasn't in the mood for difficult people right now.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I frowned. Taking a quick look around, I half expected another weeping angel to attack me. There was nothing there. I couldn't see anyone watching me either. Shrugging it off as paranoia, I kept on going.

After another minute of walking, I found someone. A man standing on the corner, waiting for the okay to cross the street, more attentive to the cars and the street light than the wallet bulge in his back pocket. Quietly moving so I was by him, I slipped my hand into his pocket as I walked behind him, taking the wallet with me. I dropped it into the messenger bag I kept at my side for my excursions. I waited until I was around the corner to pull it out and glance inside it. I would wait until I was home to count exactly how much money I had pilfered but I liked to have a rough idea so I knew when to stop.

Down the street some, I saw another man. His curly brown hair went to his shoulders and he was dressed like he belonged in Victorian times. He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at some sort of pocket watch. I wasn't sure why but I got the urge to hit him up. So, inconspicuous as possible, I made my way towards him. The crowd passing by around him was large enough so I blended in, pulling the wallet from his pocket.

I swiftly walked away, keeping with the crowd, but I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching me. I looked back at the man but, to my surprise, he wasn't there anymore. Where did he go? I didn't see him anywhere around me. He must be a fast walker.

I went to take a peek in his wallet, see what treasures waited inside. It was a plain brown leather wallet. Inside of it was a blank piece of paper. Meh. It was probably supposed to hold an ID, but he hadn't put one in there.

Now I was getting goose bumps. I swear someone was staring at me but, for the life of me, I couldn't find anyone. Maybe I'm just being a paranoid freak. Either way, I think I'm done for the day.

Turning around, I started on my way back home. Funny, I had begun thinking of the orphanage as my home. Granted, it was more of one than my own house had been growing up.

I waited for the light to change so I could cross the street. I was only halfway across when, out of nowhere, when a number of black SUVs drove in out of nowhere and parked in a circle around me. What the hell?

A woman emerged from the truck directly in front of me. Her hair was blonde and she wore a black suit with a skirt. I didn't bother to try and hide the disgust on my face. She was the head of Torchwood London. Yvonne, I think she was called in the episode, but I didn't like her. She didn't deserve a nice name. She was responsible for what happened to Rose.

"Delphine Greentree, my name is Yvonne Hartman," she introduced herself. Didn't bother to attempt to shake my hand or anything. Rude bitch. Not that I would have shaken it anyway but so not the point. "I work for Torchwood London. You need to come with us."

I resisted the urge to punch her in the face. Come with them? "Like hell. What do you need me for?" This wasn't going to end well at all. Were they the ones watching me? Somehow that didn't surprise me.

I guess she decided it wasn't important enough to beat around the bush because she got straight to the point. That or I wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter. "Our scanners show that you're giving off some strange readings, similar to a suspicious sphere we've recently acquired. According to our readings, you shouldn't exist."

"Shouldn't exist? What the hell-"

Suddenly there was a severe pain in the back of my neck, shutting me down. The next thing I knew, darkness was encompassing my vision and taking over.

~X~

My eyelids fluttered open slowly, revealing a dark grey ceiling. Holy crap, my head killed. Where was I?

The first thing I became aware of was the hard cot I seemed to be laying on. It was even worse than the beds at the orphanage. Then I noticed that I was holed up inside some sort of cage, square in shape and made of iron bars. It was a few feet taller than me and closed at the top. A padlock held the door shut. As my vision refocused, I saw a dark skinned man standing across the room, watching me. Damn it. I recognized him too. Rajesh, Torchwood's sphere watching man. It was all he seemed to be good for. He died. I remembered that.

That meant… I looked over to the side at the giant black sphere I knew would be there.

"Fuck."

* * *

Hope you guys liked it :D I'll try to get the next chapter done as soon as I can but I have finals next week so I'll need to do some studying. But I'll definitely have it done before the end of next week. That's my goal. I'm hoping to have chapter 3 up then before I leave on vacation the 22nd for a week but that's not a promise.

Anyway, I hope you guys really liked it. Review because reviews make me happy!


	2. 2: The Existing Non-Existence

I hope you guys liked chapter 1! I'm really excited for this story. I'm leaving on Wednesday for vacation with my boyfriend while a week so I won't be able to put up any more chapters until after I get back, but I'll hopefully still be working on it. But that means this will be my last chapter posted until after the 28th. Oh my goodness, I can't believe how long this chapter turned out to be, but I'm really proud of it. It took me some time to finish because of finals and school ending for the semester so sorry for the wait! All your reviews were wonderful, though, and I'm glad you guys loved it. Thanks to Cinderbunp, The Yoshinator, xxdarkvampireangelxx, Frostivy, middlekertz, MareBearSquared, and ShadowTeir for reviewing. And double thanks to TheGirlWhoImagined for reviewing and for all your awesome help. Also, thanks to everyone who didn't review but favorited or followed my story. Don't forget to review! I love seeing how much you guys enjoy this. I'm going to stop rambling now and let you read!

Chapter 2

The Existing Non-Existence

I tried not to look at them. I tried not to stare at those scientists-my torturers, my entirely possible executioners-who were leading me down the hallway. My hands were cuffed tightly behind my back and the two guards, those damned guards who were there to make sure I didn't murder anyone, were on either side of me, holding me by the arms and forcing me along with them.

I tried not to look at any of the four of them, the scientists nor the guards, for fear of what I might have seen in their faces. Emptiness, emotionlessness… Or worse. Enjoyment, happiness, pleasure… Pleasure at what they were doing to me. Enjoyment at the pain they were causing to me. Happiness at the torture they were making me endure.

And I couldn't look at them because if I did, if I looked at their faces, I might have broken. I was used to people being mean and being sadistic. My parents were worthless people. But they were angry people who hated the world as much as they hated me. These people? They didn't know me. Up until recently they hadn't even known I existed. They didn't know who I was and yet they were so eager to do these things to me.

I was led into a large room, empty except for an assortment of machines and lab-type supplies, which I recognized as my room of torture. A few weeks ago, I would have attempted to run. Now I knew better. I knew my legs were too tired to carry me far enough away, not that I knew how to get out of this place, and that they would only prod me with more stun guns if I tried.

Some of the supplies and machines in the room were familiar as they were things that had been used on me already. Other machines, like the one next to the table I would be laying on, were new and scary. It wasn't until they started putting me on the table that I started kicking and struggling. My voice was hoarse from all the screaming I had been doing lately but I screamed anyway. "What the fuck is wrong with you people?" I yelled at the top of my lungs at them. "Let go of me, you bastards!" No matter how many profanities I screamed or how many threats I made against them, they never replied. The only sign that they hear me were their faces when they first started this, as my obnoxious yells made their ears hurt, and the smirks that always appeared on their goddamn faces when they knew I was scared out of my mind. "I'll kill you! I'm going to rip your face off and pull you apart limb by fucking limb!"

Despite my protests, the guards continued to overpower me and strap me down to the table. I couldn't move, couldn't fight, and I felt the familiar feeling of helplessness seep into me as the guards left the room.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I tried to ask, and I heard my voice crack. Tears threatened to drip down the side of my face but I fought to hold them back. There was no way in hell I was going to give these bastards the benefit of seeing me cry. I had been able to keep it from happening so far and I would continue to do it.

As usual, they refused to answer my questions. I couldn't even turn my head, as there was a strap going across my forehead to keep my head still. I suppose they didn't want me to snap my neck. It would ruin their experiments if I died.

Though I couldn't see what they were doing, I could hear the metallic clink as they picked something up off the machine by me. The two scientists, if you could call them that, stepped back over to me. I braced myself, knowing what came next was never good. I felt them press an object, something sharp and metal, against the base of my head on either side. The pressure increased and I grimaced as the skin tore, placing the metal prods the back of my head. Leaving me once more, they returned to their machine. I could hear a switch being flipped.

The next thing I knew, electricity was shooting through my body. Everything felt like it was on fire. The pain was intense, but I could handle it. I refused to make a sound. I wouldn't give them that satisfaction.

I could feel the pain getting worse. They must have been turning the voltage up, trying to see what my breaking point was. I tried to be strong and endure the pain but after so many times they upped it, it had become unbearable. What was probably only a few minutes, looking back at it now, felt like hours as the electricity continued to relentlessly rip through my entire being. I stopped trying to hold it in and let myself scream. I was hoping once they heard my agony they would let up but no, they only continued to raise the voltage even further.

I'm not sure what point it was at but it felt like something in my brain snapped. Suddenly all I could feel was the immense pressure building in my head. It throbbed severely, as if threatening to explode. It felt like some force was pressing against the insides of my skull, trying to break it open to get outside. I tried to fight it, afraid of what would happen if I didn't, but the electricity had sapped all my energy.

After a moment, I gave up fighting. The pain in my head only increased, screaming at me to let it out. I thrashed in my bindings, trying to find some way to escape this torment, to no avail. The straps holding my wrists and ankles down wouldn't budge. But, after some wiggling my head around, the strap pressing against my forehead slipped.

By that time, I was begging them to stop and turn the machine off. I turned my head towards them, tears streaming down my face, pleading with them to help me. To my surprise, they were in as bad of a shape as I was.

Both scientists were cringing, doubled over in pain, and holding their heads. I hadn't heard them over my whimpering, but they were shouting at each other to turn the machine off.

~X~

They rushed to shut the machine off once they realized how much pain they were in. There must have been some sort of malfunction with it that was hurting them just as much as it had been hurting me. But would that teach them to stop doing painful experiments on a teenaged girl? No, of course not.

I had been at Torchwood London for two weeks now. It had only been just a couple weeks since they ambushed me while I was crossing the street and knocked me out. I wondered how Lola was doing without me. Was she looking for me? When I had asked Yvonne the Blonde Bitch what the public would think of them kidnapping me like that she laughed, saying that they had the power to make the public think I was some sort of criminal, taken into custody, or anything they wanted the pubic to think. For all I knew, Lola was sitting in her bed at Greentree, believing that I was rotting away in jail somewhere.

Let's be honest, that's what I was doing.

I knew I had been there for two weeks because there was one worker who was nice to me. Guess who that was. Mickey Smith! He had snuck into getting a job at Torchwood to keep an eye on the sphere that couldn't possibly exist and, being the good guy that he was, helped me out when he could. I really hadn't given him enough credit on the show. He told me what day it was and how many had passed. He promised me that he would help me, that he would get me out of here. Plus, when he could, he fed me better things than the slop that Blondie thought was appropriate for an "experiment" like me.

That was me. I was their experiment. All they had done since they kidnapped me that day was perform experiments on me. I still didn't understand why. They kept telling me that I shouldn't be there. They told me that I was giving off readings similar to the sphere and all their machines told them I couldn't be here because I didn't exist.

_Didn't exist_. That's what they continually said to me. But that couldn't be true. They were obviously wrong because I was there. I lived and breathed and I existed because I knew that I was there. They knew I was there, yet they kept insisting that I wasn't. They could feel and touch me, perform tests on me. I didn't know what exactly all their stupid information was telling them but it was wrong. They were wrong.

At first, it wasn't so bad at Torchwood London. The people were all jackasses, aside from Mickey, but I believed I would be okay. After all, when I first arrived, there would only be a month until the Doctor would come to stop the ghost shifts. I hadn't known exactly what Torchwood had wanted to do with me but I thought that as long as I knew the Doctor was coming I would be okay. And I was at first. They started with un-invasive tests, things like scans and making me pee in a cup. Not the most elegant thing in the world but if that was the worst of it, things couldn't be too bad.

Then it got worse. The results they got from the tests must not have been to their liking or maybe they were and they wanted more. Either way, the tests started becoming more invasive and more painful, like what I had just survived. I couldn't imagine what they would put me through next.

But I couldn't leave. I was sure if I tried hard enough I could get out and away from there but that wasn't an option. I had been there for two weeks, which meant that there were only another two until Army of Ghosts. That means only two more weeks until he shows up. If I just wait for the Doctor, I know I'll be okay.

Oh, look, Rajesh was leaving. That meant Mickey would come over to see how I was doing after today's round of torture. He kept telling me that he would get me out of here once the sphere began acting up. Of course I knew what would happen when it did but I couldn't say anything. Even when the Doctor arrived, I wouldn't be able to say anything about who I was and what I knew. I had been a Whovian long enough to know that any sort of information, no matter how small and insignificant it might seem, could greatly affect the time lines and causes events to change. I wouldn't be responsible for that.

~X~

I noticed they started making me wear a strange black helmet after the near-head explosion incident that day. I had no way of knowing why, whether it was to keep the machine from malfunctioning or if it was just some part of another experiment, and they refused to answer my questions about it, as usual. After the first couple times I wore it, I stopped caring. Whether it was because of the helmet or not, I never got one of those splitting headaches again.

Not only did they force me to wear that god awful helmet during experiments but they also latched some bracelet onto my wrist that I couldn't get off no matter how hard I tried to pry it off. It sort of looked like a feminine gold Rolex watch band with odd stones in the center of every other gold piece. I guess they could have stuck me with worse. I assumed it was for some weird type of identification or a test I hadn't yet experienced.

I had gotten used to the idea that this would be my life. At least, until the Doctor showed up that was. Then I would convince him to make me a companion and I would leave this place behind for good. But until that happened, which should have been soon, I would suffer through the aches and pains this place put me through. It would all be worth it once I was with him.

That was until one day.

I had lost track of time. Rajesh rarely left the sphere room anymore, so obsessed with it and its secrets, so that Mickey was unable to come and talk to me. I was no longer sure of what day it was or how long there was left until the Doctor's arrival. I could only hope that when he came in to see the sphere I was there and not being hauled off to some other obscure experiment. If he saw me, saw my pain and what Torchwood was doing to me, then he would most definitely make them stop and save me. Then I would be all brave and he would be impressed, and he would insist on seeing my test results. Things would escalate from there and then I would be amazing during the whole adventure so much that he would have to take me with him. I had it all planned out.

One day I was just sitting in my prison cell, as I referred to it, staring at Rajesh as I often liked to do. What? They refused to give me anything interesting to do while I was stuck in here and so my only entertainment came from staring like a creep at Rajesh. It freaked him out a bit and that always made me feel slightly better.

I groaned when the door opened and the scientists with their crummy guards walked in. "You people really need to get a life," I snorted as they opened the cage door and cuffed my hands together. You know, the usual routine. "Because if this is all you do, then you need a new hobby. Try knitting, or crocheting. Fun yarn things that involve big pointy needles. If you're really lucky, you might even be able to skewer yourself in the eye and then you could have one big eyeball shish kabob." I had long since gone from being timid and scared of them to being cynical and pissed. This whole thing was getting tiring. Of course, they didn't seem to find my snarky little jokes very amusing like I did. Their loss. I was awesome and they were missing it.

"So, tell me, lads, what are we up to today?" I asked sarcastically as they dragged me down the oh so familiar hallway once more. "Oh, I know! Today you're going to lob my arm off and see how long it takes for me to beat you with it. That sounds like fun! Better yet, let's take one of yours off. It doesn't have to be your dominant arm. The other one is fine, too."

It seemed like I had finally hit their last nerve because the bald scientist man in front stopped short. I let a smug grin light up my face when he turned around, steam practically erupting from his ears, and glared at me. "Go ahead and keep joking around, you little ingrate," he snarled. He was furious but I could see a glint of happiness in his eyes. "This is it. Today is the last experiment. We're not supposed to tell you this but we're going to lobotomize you. Shut you up for once in your pathetic life. We're going to scoop out your brain bit by bit and, when you're finally dead, we'll autopsy your body and harvest your organs." He turned back around and began leading the way once more.

My mouth had gone dry. I was shaking. Lobotomize me? Kill me? No, they couldn't. They couldn't do that. The Doctor wasn't here yet! There was no one to save me. They were going to murder me and there was no one to stop them.

I promptly began thrashing about, even in the hold of the guards, but I couldn't force them to let me go. I could only watch, helpless, as they opened the doors to the dreaded room.

"You can't do this to me!" I found my voice as I passed through the doorway and started screaming at the top of my lungs. "Where the hell is your humanity? What kind of monsters are you?"

Ignoring me, they gestured for the guards to start strapping me down. They had only gotten one wrist done when the phone on the wall began to ring. With an annoyed huff, the two scientists walked over. One picked up the phone and held it between them so they both could hear. The one looked over at me and, mistakenly thinking I had been strapped down, motioned for the guards to leave. Confused, but offering no arguments, the guards left. Thank you, idiots.

While they were both distracted by the phone call, I quietly undid the binding on my wrist. I slid off the table and onto the floor. It helped that I was barefoot. They didn't hear me pad across the floor towards them, stopping right behind them so I could eavesdrop on their conversation. I recognized Blondie's voice on the other end and resisted the urge to gag. Oh, how I hated her. While I listened, I used my thieving skills to reach my hand into Baldy's pocket and carefully pull out his taser. It was hard to hear without getting close enough for them to detect my presence but I grinned at the bit I was able to catch. "The Doctor is here. He's angry and wants you to bring the girl up."

Bingo! The Doctor saves the day. The terror I had felt at being lobotomized subsided and I resigned myself to standing behind them, taser at the ready, waiting for them to finish up their phone call. Ain't I polite?

The moment they went to put the phone back on the wall, I attacked. Taser fired up, I jabbed it into Baldy's neck and then the other guy's. Before either of them knew what happened, they were unconscious on the floor. "Now you know how I feel!" I laughed revengefully at their bodies. I highly doubted they would have actually brought me up to her. Once everything started, the Doctor would no longer be worried about the girl they were holding hostage. It was more likely that these two bastards would still kill me and say that I was already dead when they got the call. Therefore, I would rather do things my way.

The urge to kick them while they were down crossed my mind and I was so incredibly tempted to do it. They deserved it, didn't they? But, alas, I was running against the clock now. I had to get moving so I could catch up with the Doctor and his group before the whole shebang went down. "You're lucky I'm a good person," I told them, though they couldn't hear me. "Eh, who am I kidding? I'm really not. But, at least, I'm better than you." And that was something I could take pride in.

Now, what was I going to do? Only these two guys knew that I was off limits now. Blondie must have had a moment of stupidity and mentioned what they were doing to me to the Doctor while they were looking at the sphere. Knowing the Doctor, he got angry and demanded they release me. But that didn't mean she would have told the whole place to leave me alone. More than likely, anyone else was going to look at me and try to hole me up again. That wasn't an option.

My eyes settled on a white lab coat, like the ones the scientists wore and the one Rose would don when she got out of the TARDIS, sitting on the desk in the corner of the room. Someone must have left it behind earlier and never come back for it. Oh well, their loss is my gain.

I looked strange in the lab coat. I was still wearing the crappy clothes Torchwood had forced me to wear, which consisted of a grey hospital-type gown that, thankfully, didn't have an open back, a pair of small matching shorts and a lack of shoes. Yeah, at a close look basically anyone here would realize that I wasn't a scientist but hopefully the lab coat would be enough to throw them off at first look.

Trying to look as professional and scientist-y as possible, I opened the door to the hallway and peeked around. Seeing no one in the hallway, I stepped out and half walked, half jogged down it.

I wasn't quite sure where to go, admittedly. I only vaguely knew the parts of Torchwood London that had been shown in the two episodes and the tiny parts I had been dragged around for the last month. All in all, it didn't add up to a whole lot of knowledge. I was pretty much wandering around lost. I couldn't ask anyone where to go because that would draw unwanted attention. By this point, Mickey would be occupied too. I had just remembered that Blondie would die soon. Was it bad that I was almost happy about that? Note to self, don't tell the Doctor that. He would frown on that.

After wandering through a few hallways and not seeing more than the occasional person, who I immediately hid behind a wall to avoid, I came to the conclusion that most of the staff must be busy with the ghost shift and the Doctor, and possibly being turned into Cybermen. I felt bad for all those people who were converted into those mechanical menaces but I was also glad that it was less I had to worry about now.

I passed by a room and stopped, peering in. It was some sort of lab, I thought, with a couple computers. It occurred to me that, while I was there, maybe I should delete my files off their database. All I needed was for a different Torchwood or someone worse to get their hands on them and come hunt me down. Looking through the window on the door, I saw no one was in the room and snuck in.

I was in luck; someone had forgotten to log off their computer. Sitting down on the edge of the chair in front of it, I began scanning the computer files for my name. It took me a few minutes. They had a lot of files to go through and I wasn't sure where they would keep mine. Eventually, I found my name grouped in with other test subjects. I was surprised at how many people, or non-people, they were experimenting on. I didn't have time to worry about them now. I didn't even have time to read my own file and find out what information they had on me. Hitting the delete button, I watched in anticipation as the progress bar made its way from beginning to end.

I heard voices from the hallway nearing the room I was in. I waited until the very last second, making sure my file was completely gone, before getting up. There was a door on the other side of the room and I fled before someone found me.

Passing through that door, I immediately ducked. I had found myself inside a Cybermen conversion chamber. There was more than one in the building? Actually, that didn't surprise me. I guess even Cybermen didn't want to go all the way up to the top floor to convert people if they didn't need to.

Thankfully, they didn't seem to have noticed me. I was crouching behind some overturned desk, or something of the like, trying to calm my breathing. Please don't find me. I began chanting that in my head. I really didn't want to become a Cyberman.

I had to find another way out. I couldn't go back the way I had come because there were people there now. There had to be another door in this room that I could quietly and unnoticeably escape through. Daring to peek my head out to look around for one, I immediately wished I hadn't. The first person I spotted was Baldy, one of the jackass scientists. I saw the Cyberman holding him give him a shove and I ducked my head back down. I couldn't watch that. It was bad enough that the conversion machine began churning and all I could hear were his screams.

Just twenty minutes ago, he had been trying to kill me. But I was alive and he was becoming a Cyberman. I hated that man more than anything but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I had to get out now. Once his screaming subsided, I forced myself to take another peek around. There was a door not far from my position. I could make it there if I was quiet…

Four seconds after I thought that, my foot hit a pipe on the ground, creating a loud clang as it bumped into the table. "Intruder!" I heard the familiar Cybermen voices yell in my direction. I had been seen. Their metal footsteps resounded in the room as several of them started towards me. "You will be upgraded."

"Sorry, can't stay!" I yelped and turned tail. I was lucky they couldn't run and I made it to the door unharmed. But I knew that since they had seen me, they would be after me.

Where to go? Looking down the hallway to my left, I saw a sign on the wall. North corner staircase! Up I went, taking the stairs two at a time. Behind me, I could hear the clanging as the Cybermen began climbing up after me.

I don't know how many stairs I climbed when I heard a woman's voice above me. North corner staircase? That was the one Jackie was running down, if I'm wasn't mistaken.

As I rounded the corner, I nearly smacked into her. She screamed, thinking I was going to kill her most likely. "Hello there!" I said breathlessly. Her surprise gone, she looked at me briefly before looking at the stairs above her and then at the ones below. "No, you don't want to go down. Being chased. Name's Delphine!" I was too out of breath for full sentences now. It had been too long since I'd gotten any form of real exercise and running like a maniac up the stairs had taken it out of me.

"Jackie," she said quickly. "I've got them after me, too."

We both glanced at the door next to us and nodded. The sounds of Cybermen were getting closer and I yanked the door open without giving it another thought, letting Jackie in first. We found ourselves in a corridor and continued down it. We didn't get far, though, because a Cyberman stepped out in front of us. Damn, I'd forgotten about that one. "You will be upgraded."

"No, but you can't. Please!" Jackie whimpered, stepping back.

Something shot the Cyberman from behind, immediately shorting it out. It fell to the ground, dead, and I looked up from it to see the magnificent bunch I'd been looking for, with Pete holding the gun in his hands. "Pete!" Jackie gasped.

Everyone's eyes were on Pete and Jackie. For the moment, I was basically invisible, even though I was barely two feet away from her. It was okay, though. I knew I couldn't disrupt their reunion, otherwise the rest of the episode, er… I had to remember that this wasn't television anymore. This was real life now and, if I changed things like this, then things wouldn't turn out the way they were supposed to. If Jackie and Pete didn't decide to be together then she wouldn't go with him to the other dimension and he wouldn't catch Rose and things would get real bad real fast.

I tuned back in as Jackie left my side, running to Pete with open arms. It was kind of sweet. I hoped I would have that someday. They hugged and I took that as my chance to step forward and remind her I was there. Finally remembering me, Jackie stepped back from Pete. "Oh, I found someone, being chased by the Cybermen. Ran into her on the stairs. Her name's Delphine. I think that's what you said, yeah?"

I nodded with a smile. Oh my god. I was being introduced to the Doctor. Well, the Doctor and everyone else but I already knew Mickey. I had to fight to suppress the urge growing inside of me to run up and hug the Time Lord. I had never considered myself a fan girl. I never pictured myself as one of those people who stood on the side squealing and vying for the attention of some celebrity. I had also never believed that I would meet David Tennant, let alone the Doctor. I had come to terms with the fact that, as much as I joked that I wish he could be my husband, the Doctor was a fictional character I would never meet. And yet, there he was and there I was. I wasn't even sure what to say. But I couldn't act like I knew him or any of them, except for Mickey of course, because that would be suspicious so I had to pretend I was a normal, unaware girl. "Yep, Delphine Greentree. I can't tell you how good it is to see real people besides those talking machine monster things."

"You're the little thief who stole my paper!"

I think we all did a double take as we looked at the Doctor. I had noticed him staring at me but I had thought it was because I was new or, at the very least, he realized I was the Torchwood captive. "What?" was all I could think of to say.

"My psychic paper!" the Doctor kept going, his face showing more surprise than anger. "You stole my psychic paper!"

"But, Doctor," Rose said slowly, glancing back and forth between him and me. "You have your psychic paper. You use it all the time."

"No, no, no." He walked up to me, stopping barely a half a foot away, and looked down at me. "I have multiple psychic papers. I can't have just one. What would happen if I ever lost it or had it _stolen_," he said accusingly, giving me what I could only describe as his version of the evil eye.

Oh, crap. I think he was right. I remembered last month, before Torchwood had snatched me off the street, pick pocketing a strange looking man who had a brown leather wallet with a blank piece of paper inside it. I had dismissed it as a wallet that only carried IDs and he hadn't put one in yet. I was a Whovian! How could I have missed that? It was psychic paper I had thieved off of him. Again, I couldn't tell him that because then he would wonder how I knew what psychic paper was. "I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? And who the fuck are you?"

"Oi, language!" Jackie snapped, looking at me with an appalled look. I guess she had assumed that, because I looked young, I wouldn't have a potty mouth.

If there was ever anything that annoyed me to the end of the Earth, it was people telling me to watch my mouth. "Because you have a right to tell a person you've known for all of ten seconds how to speak?" I was so ready to go off on a string of profanities, my specialty, when Mickey burst out laughing. "And you, Mickey, all that talk of getting me out of here and you forgot about me! Haven't even bothered to ask how I'm doing! If I had something to throw, I would throw it at you!"

I knew the Doctor would figure out who I was, between my appearance and the fact that I was running around this place, but I think it was that I knew Mickey that put the puzzle together in his head. "You're the girl Torchwood's been experimenting on."

"If you can call it that…" My voice came out weaker than I had expected it to. That was going to be a sensitive topic for awhile. But it was over. I was away from their clutches and I would never have to deal with their so-called experiments again. I cleared my throat and tried to smile as best as I could. "Yep, I'm the one they kidnapped off the street and ran countless terrible 'experiments' on and practically lobotomized today until you made them stop, which thanks a ton for that by the way, because, as they keep telling me, I don't exist. Which I can't even begin to explain how much they're wrong because clearly I'm standing right here, all touchable and people-y and existing and stuff." I noticed Mickey look away, which I knew he felt bad at not having been able to help me more, and the others just kind of looked shocked and sad. The Doctor looked like he was about to say something but, being me, this was something I would rather not have dealt with. "But there are more pressing things to deal with than my apparent existing non-existence, according to crappy ass Torchwood. So, if it's alright with you lot, then I'm gonna stick with you for the rest of this life-threatening situation. You're all alive still so you must be better at this than some of the employees here."

"Don't be daft," Jackie smiled at me and put a reassuring hand on my arm. I honestly wanted to hug her right then, though I kept my composure and didn't. She didn't even know me and she acted more motherly towards me than my own mother ever had.

Rose agreed right after her mother. "Of course you can come with us." Having no way to know that I already knew who they all were, she began their introductions. "I'm Rose Tyler and this is my mum, Jackie. This is my dad, from a parallel universe, Pete and I think you already know Mickey."

"And I'm the Doctor," the lanky man in front of me said with one of those goofy grins I knew so well. He was so much better in person than on television. His hair was messier, his smile more adorable, and his eyes… Even today, I'm still not sure how to describe them. They were beautiful and terrible both at the same time. They had a way of sucking me in, of making me want to drown in his chocolate gaze. There in front of him, I could finally see what everyone meant when they said his eyes showed his age. "It's terrific to meet you, Delphine Greentree. Wonderful name. Now let's get going, shall we?"

They continued moving to their next destination to stop the mess that was going on in this world, with me in tow. I automatically went to walk by the Doctor, not wanting to miss out on any quality time with my favorite Time Lord. Before I could move to him, though, Mickey approached me. "I'm sorry I wasn't more help to you," he apologized, looking guiltier than I had ever seen anyone look before. "I wasn't there when they took you away earlier. By the time I got back and found out what they were going to do, I thought it was too late. Then the sphere started acting up and I thought you were gone already… If I had known you made it out-"

"Mickey, stop." I gave him a quick hug, something I rarely ever did. I wasn't a fan of people being in my personal bubble space, but he looked like he needed it. "I'm fine, see? My brain is intact. No weird pointy object got shoved in my eyeballs, which is fine by me because I like my eyes, multi colored and all. I have really got to stop getting off track of things. It's a bad habit. Anyway!" I was rambling now. It was what happened when I was excited, which I totally was because I had just met the Doctor. "My point is that you need to stop feeling responsible, because you aren't. Not in the slightest, teeny tiniest way. Did you kidnap me? No. It's not like you could have broken me out or anything since you were keeping an eye on that sphere thing. So, I forgive you for not being able to do anything about them trying to kill me. Not that I should be forgiving you because there's nothing to forgive you for. Holy crap, they're staring at us now, aren't they?"

It had finally occurred to me that we were standing while the group had been leaving and now they were watching us. "Maybe just a bit."

Mickey laughed as I tried to catch my breath from the long-winded lecture I had just given him. "I seriously need to stop giving speeches. People who digress as much as I do and don't know when to shut up should not give speeches. Especially not in dire situations where robotic armies are trying to annihilate the world. Was that just the worst speech in the history of speeches? I mean it's no 'The only thing to fear is fear itself' talk. Granted, my speech also wasn't as bad as the time Lily tried to convince the senior class that we should petition to have a giraffe as our school mascot and… Damn it, Delphine, shut up." Pete was giving me a strange look that said he thought I was out of my mind while Rose and Jackie tried to hold back laughter. Mickey hadn't tried too hard and was now holding his stomach while he outright chortled and the Doctor was looking at me in a way I couldn't describe. I wanted to say curiosity and possible interest but it might have been something along the lines of what Pete was going with. "Sorry. I'm not so great at first impressions and I tend to just blurt out whatever's on my mind when I'm freaking out."

Patting me on the back, Mickey led me back into the group. "We'll just pretend it never happened."

Moving once more, I took full advantage of the opportunity to talk to the Doctor this time. No more Mickey to console, I walked along the Doctor's right side. I had to pretend I was just another girl who didn't know the Doctor. And what would a girl like that do? She would ask questions about him. I had seen enough new companions to know that and, so, that's what I was going to do. "So, the Doctor, huh?" I was lucky that Rose was too infatuated with her parent's reunion to cling to the Doctor in the front of the pack right now. I loved Rose but I needed a moment with no interruptions. His warm eyes looked down at me with a comforting smile. He was a bit taller than I had expected. I was only 5'5" so he had about half a foot on me. "Doctor what, exactly? Because no one's name is just the Doctor."

"Doctor what?" At that his face scrunched up as if he had smelled something funny. "Haven't heard that one before. But we don't really have time for me to explain who I am right now." The smile was gone now, replaced with a frown. "I am so sorry for what they've been doing to you."

I knew it was partly because he wanted to avoid talking about who he was, but also partly because he truly was sorry. I only shrugged and shoved my hands into the pockets of my stolen lab coat. "It doesn't matter. What's done is done."

He gave me a look that clearly meant it did matter. Pretending not to notice, I took my hands out of the pockets, deciding it looked awkward and to give myself something to do. "Like you said, strange Doctor man, we don't have time."

~X~

This was all so bizarre. I had watched all the episodes of Doctor Who so many times that I knew everything that happened. I would watch an episode and know what enemy would be there when they rounded the corner, or what line the Doctor would use. I had watched all those episodes again and again, imagining myself in the episode and away from my life. And now I was really here. It was like a dream come true, only slightly scarier because there was the prospect of coming face to face with a Cyberman, again, or a Dalek.

I was standing with Rose, her parents, and Mickey outside the room where the Daleks and Cybermen were waging war on each other. Just as I knew he would, the Doctor was sneaking inside to go get the magna clamps, those giant black clamp things that could attach to basically anything. Of course, while everyone else was wondering why he was risking his life to go in there and get them, I knew why. And even though I knew he would survive going in there and coming back out, I couldn't watch like the others because, even with my knowledge, I would cringe just like Rose was doing every time a shot passed by him. That was just the way I was. So I leaned against the wall by the doors and waited.

It didn't take long for him to tuck and roll his way through the battle and return with the clamps. Once he was back out, he placed the 3D glasses he had with him on his face and peeked back into the room. I was remind of a shirt I had bought a shirt off a site called Teefury back at home, in my own universe, that showed the Doctor wearing those glasses. I had loved that shirt more than any other piece of clothing I owned and I had worn it whenever it was done in the wash. I missed that shirt.

"Override roof mechanism." I tuned back in as I heard a Dalek give the command to open the roof. I braced myself because I knew we were going to start running. Running had never been my thing, in either universe. I briefly wondered if the TARDIS had a gym where I could get better at it.

"What're they doing? Why'd they need to get outside?" Leaning over Rose as she spoke, I peeked into the room just in time to see the roof finishing opening.

The Doctor mumbled to himself, wondering as he pulled his glasses off. "Time Lord science? What Time Lord science? What is it?"

We watched as the black Dalek, Dalek Sec, moved to the middle of the room to stand by the Genesis Ark. After a second, they both began to levitate and rise into the air. Shutting the door, the Doctor popped up and started down the hallway. And there he went with the running. "We've gotta see what it's doing, we've gotta go back up! Come on! All of you! Top floor!"

"Forty-five floors my ass," I grumbled under my breath, earning a chuckle from Mickey who managed to hear me.

"That's forty-five floors up!" Jackie said what we were both feeling. "Believe me, I've done 'em all."

I pretended like I was trying to keep up with them, when in reality I was waiting. But I had to make it look good, like I didn't have a clue what was going to happen. Just as we passed by the elevator, a spiky haired boy who I recalled as Jake from Pete's universe popped his head out. "We could always take the lift."

I was relieved that we didn't have to take the forty-five flights of stairs up but at the same time, not so much. "Are you okay?" Rose asked me when she noticed me leaning against the wall in the corner of the elevator with my eyes closed.

I could feel all eyes watching me as soon as she spoke, including the Doctor's piercing gaze, and I refused to open my eyes for that reason as well. "Elevators… Let's just say that they aren't my thing. Confined spaces, way too many people… And, no offense, because I'm sure I don't smell like the loveliest person right now after being cooped up here for a month, but after all the stress and running around you've been doing today, you people are sweaty and kind of smell. And it's really hot in here so I'm feeling more than a little nauseas at the moment. If it's kosher with you lot, I'm just going to stand here and imagine that I'm lying on a beach somewhere until this stops."

I must have sounded kind of snarky because I no longer felt five pairs of eyes on me. I felt one pair, which I'm sure was the Doctor's or possibly Mickey's eyes, but I could handle that.

It felt like hours when the elevator finally dinged, alerting us that we had reach floor forty-five. I was the first one out, taking a few deep breathes of fresh, non-elevator air and gratefully feeling my nausea subside. I was beginning to sweat from all the excitement today and from being packaged into that lift and I slid the lab coat off me, laying it on a random chair. By then, everyone was crowding around the window to get a look at the Dalek. I wandered over to join them.

Dalek Sec, with the Genesis Ark, finished rising into the sky. Like a door, half of the ark slid open, revealing another Dalek inside. The Doctor's face turned from wondering to pure horror when that Dalek shot out of the ark, followed by dozens more. "Time Lord science… It's bigger on the inside."

"Did Time Lords put those Daleks in there?" Mickey asked, his eyes wide. "What for?"

I decided to speak up, though I wasn't quite sure how to insert myself into their conversation. It was tacky but I didn't know what else to say. "It looks like some sort of small, Dalek shaped ship." I was surprised at how weak my voice sounded.

"It's a prison ship," the Doctor said quietly.

Rose looked at him in disbelief, understanding in some way what that meant. "How many Daleks?"

"Millions."

That was where Pete turned and walked away from the window, out of Blondie's office and into the large white room. "I'm sorry, but you've had it." He began speaking but somewhere in his rant, my mind tuned him out.

I was shaking. I couldn't explain it. I didn't know why. But I was shaking and I couldn't stop. It was just Daleks. I kept telling myself that but, still, my body was ignoring me. It was only Daleks. I had seen them hundreds of times. Cybermen, too. Weeping Angels, the Silence, the Vashta Nerada… I had watched Doctor Who on repeat since 2005. I had seen all of the deadly foes and scary monsters from the Whoverse so many times they no longer scared me. Sure, did the Weeping Angels creep me out? Yeah, they did. But I laughed at the Daleks and the Cybermen were like giant pathetic robots. They were just Daleks and Cybermen. I had seen them on TV so many times.

It hit me like a ton of bricks with a jet pack. It was no longer the television I was watching. This was real life now. I wasn't watching special effects and handmade Dalek props rolling around on a square screen in my tiny little apartment. That was really Dalek Sec out there, floating in the sky, and real live Daleks leaving their ark. I had run into the Cybermen earlier but, even then, I hadn't quite believed they were really there. All of this felt like an episode of Doctor Who, seen from a different angle. It was my angle. I was here and this was real life. I could die.

And Rose. Rose was actually going to die. Not dying in the strictest terms, but I would have to watch her vanish into Pete's universe. I knew that Rose would disappear forever, that the Doctor would grieve for months and never quite heal. I knew all these things about their lives and yet I was helpless, useless. I couldn't say a thing because it would disrupt the time stream, or whatever. That was one of the Doctor's biggest rules; never mess with fixed points in time. I wasn't a Time Lord or anything but I was fairly certain Rose's death was a fixed point. If she didn't disappear, she would never be able to come back for Donna later on. It didn't change the fact, though, that I couldn't stop her from going, that I knew what would happen and yet I was helpless to do anything. This was all suddenly very real to me.

"Delphine?" I was shaken from my thoughts with a hand in my face. Mickey was standing next to me, waving his hand to get my attention. Everyone had moved into the next room to decide what to do and I, lost in my little daze, hadn't budged. "How are you holding up?"

Looking past him, I noticed the Doctor staring at me a little strangely. I recognized that face. It was the face he had when he was trying to figure something out or solve a puzzle. I nodded, knowing there wasn't any time to deal with my issues then and there. We had a schedule to follow. "I'm alright. This is all just a little much to handle after everything I've been through."

With an understanding, Mickey patted my back. I followed him out to join everybody else. Pete had just finished telling Jackie that she had no choice but to go with him to his parallel universe. "But they're destroying the city!"

They began arguing, like they were supposed to, and I almost wanted to smile. It was nice to see a couple arguing because of how much they love each other and what they believe in for once. I was so used to seeing angry arguing, and arguing with no point. Pete looked at her with such affection that it was impossible to think, even with the fighting they were doing, that he didn't love her. I'd never had that, and I wanted it. I couldn't help but glance at the Doctor, watching the couple just as we all were.

For so many years of my life, the Doctor had been my dream. Not just him, but the entire show. It was my wishful thinking, what I longed to have when things sucked worse than they had before. It was the only thing I had written fanfictions about and, for the most part, the only television show I had gotten attached to. I had cried like a baby for days when Rose left the show and felt my heart ripped out when Donna had her memories wiped. I had refused to get out of bed for a week when 10 regenerated into 11 because the thought that David Tennant wouldn't be there anymore was too much to bear. I can't even begin to count the number of times I wished, on birthday candles or a shooting star, that somehow the Doctor would arrive at my doorstep and whisk me away. And a month and a half ago when I arrived here in this dimension that wasn't mine, all I could think about was how I could finally make that a reality. When Torchwood kidnapped me, I didn't even try to escape because I knew the Doctor would save me somehow. He would stride in, in all his glory, and save me from the horror that is Torchwood London. I would be dazzling and awesome like no one he had ever seen and I would make him want to take me with him. And off we would go, the Doctor and Delphine, a force to be reckoned with.

Funny thing is, when you plan a future for yourself, you never really count on all the bad things that happen. You don't count on being hijacked by a bunch of British psychos who have nothing better to do than torture you with countless experiments, or barely escaping a Cybermen conversion chamber. And you cry during Doctor Who because the show is so utterly heart wrenching, but you never imagine how hard it would be to actually be there and witness all the terrible things you see on TV. You have a good cry and move on to the next episode, to the next part of life. But that was me. I was that person, the girl who thought that life would be dandy once I met him. Even after everything that had happened to me through my life, I had been foolish enough to hope for the best.

I hadn't factored into my plans the fact that he would be too busy saving the world to notice me, or that I wouldn't know how to make myself part of the group. To him, I was probably just another random person he was saving. Once he was done saving me, I would just be another girl still alive, another passerby who didn't die, another memory. When the adventure was over, when the crisis had been averted and I was saved, he would never think of me again. I would be someone forgotten, a blurry shape in the back of his mind, like so many times before.

I wished he would stop staring at me. I hadn't been listening but I could tell Pete and Jackie had stopped fighting. No longer focused on their predicament, he had turned to looking at me again, and then he was walking towards me. I felt like I couldn't breathe.

He stopped in front of me, but I couldn't read his face. Leaning down slightly, he took my hands in his. They had seemed so much larger than mine at the time. I looked down to where he was staring, and became aware that I had been rubbing the bruises on my wrists. I had bruises all over, from the bindings used to hold me down and the guards' grips as they dragged me to experiments, and scars ranging small to large everywhere, from my legs to my neck. He had that steely look on his face, the one he took when he was angry about something. An almost unnoticeable tremor passed through me, causing him to look back up into my multi-colored eyes. "I'm sorry," he said softly, and I wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault. "Are you okay?" I tried to answer him, but the words wouldn't come. My throat closed, preventing me from telling him I was fine. My eyes must have betrayed my real feelings, because he put his hands on my shoulders, his eyes never leaving mine. A warmth rushed through me, calming my tremor and opening my throat once more. "You'll be okay." For the first time that I could remember, I believed those words.

And just like the jealous not-so-girlfriend she was, Rose interrupted our moment. "But we can't just leave. What about the Daleks, and the Cybermen?" I knew from experience she wasn't asking only out of concern for her planet, but out of anger that the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, was paying more attention to another girl than her at the moment. I resisted the urge to feel snarky, because it was Rose. For the time being, he technically was her Doctor. So I let it go. Look at me, being the bigger person.

He left me, remembering the problem at hand, and bounded back to stand in front of us. "They're part of the problem. And _that_ makes them part of the solution. Oh yes!" He placed his 3D glasses back on his nose with a giant grin. "Well? Isn't anyone gonna ask? What is it with the glasses?"

His smile was infectious and, despite the situation, Rose was grinning along with him. "What is it with the glasses?"

"I can see! That's what!" he nearly erupted. It was easy to see that he'd been waiting for someone to ask him that question for some time now. "'Cause we've got two separate worlds, but in-between the two separate worlds, we've got the Void. That's where the Daleks were hiding. And the Cybermen travelled through the Void to get here! And you lot-one world to another, via the Void! Oh, I like that. Via the Void! Look!" Pulling the glasses off, he pushed them onto Rose's face next. She adjusted them while he moved side to side. "I've been through it. Do you see?"

I knew what she was seeing through those funny three-dimensional glasses. The Doctor would be covered in floating green and red particles. In the background, the computer gave notice of a computer reboot in three minutes, but no one paid it any attention as Rose turned to look at everyone. "Even Delphine has it."

She removed the glasses, handing them back to the Doctor, as, once again, it was time for everyone to stare at me. I was beginning to feel like an attraction at the zoo. "I noticed that." The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets, giving me a deadly serious look. "I think it's time you told us, Delphine Greentree, who exactly are you?"

"I'm just a normal girl," I started but quickly gave that up when he raised an eyebrow at me, indicating that there was no way in hell he was going to believe that story. "No? Alright then. To make a long story short, I'm from a parallel universe, I guess you would call it, and one that sucks. I'm not really sure why I'm here, but I am."

He seemed to accept that as a decent answer for the time being, probably due to a lack of time for me to really explain. "The Daleks lived inside the Void. They're bristling with it. Cybermen-all of them. I just open the Void-end of verse. The Void stuff gets sucked back inside."

Rose finally understood what that all meant and enthusiastically added, "Pulling them all in."

"Pulling them all in!"

"Sorry," Mickey said, stepping into the conversation. "What's the void?"

Oh, how I wish I could have answered these questions. While it was an amazing thing to be here with the Who crew, it was kind of frustrating to have to watch all this when I'd seen it at least a dozen times on the television. I knew all these answers and, yet, I had to watch _again_ as all of this happened. "The dead space. Some people call it Hell," the Doctor explained, with no notion to how much this was killing me not to be able to say anything.

I had been glancing at Rose, waiting for the moment when things finally clicked, and I saw her face freeze as they did. "But it's... like you said, we've all got Void stuff. Me too, 'cause we went to that parallel world," she began slowly, the pieces fitting together in her head and not liking what they told her. "We're all contaminated. We'll get pulled in."

The Doctor's face was grim as he told her, "That's why you've gotta go." The computer gave the two minute alert. Rose just stared at him, uncomprehending what he was trying to say. "Back to Pete's world." And, just like the Doctor to digress in the middle of a life or death situation, he pointed over to Pete. "Hey, we should call it that; Pete's World." Looking back to Rose, his face returned to the sad but hard expression he'd had. "I'm opening the Void, but only on this side. You'll be safe on that side."

"That means I'll get sucked in, too, right?" My voice came out more of a pathetic laugh than I had meant it to. "I'm covered in all this crappy Void stuff because I was yanked out of my life, not that I had liked it or anything, and thrown into this universe against my will. So, I'll be eaten by the Void too. All gobbled up like a big Void stuff sandwich."

"Yeah," was all he could say to me. It was hard for me to tell if the one word answer was because he was distraught over Rose or because he just didn't care too much if I got sucked in.

Either way, it pissed me off more. "You're shitting me, right?" Everyone's eyes went sort of wide as I went off on an angry tirade that probably would have been better off in my head. "This is shit. No, no, no, this isn't happening. I've been… I mean, I finally… _Fuck_! Lily, this would be a really great time for you to tell me that I'm being Punk'd or that this is some stupidly elaborate prank and let me strangle you. No? Of course not. And, yes, I know I'm not making any sense!" Of course, no one understood what I was talking about in the slightest and they all had that look that said I had gone insane. I was used to that look. "Nope, there's no way in hell I'm leaving. I have a life here. I may have only lived here for a month and a half but I have friends who need me! Okay, maybe it's just one friend, but she still needs me!"

"What about your family?"

I was stunned when Jackie asked me about them. I hadn't been expecting that, but I suppose that's who Jackie was. "Don't have one. I'm an orphan. That's why no one threw a fuss when I went missing. But I have Lola, and I'm sure that loon is out there looking for me and I can't leave her." Of course, I knew this was all a lie. I cared about Lola, but she wasn't reason enough to stay. I wanted to stay, had to stay, because I had waited all this time for the Doctor.

Meanwhile I had been arguing, Rose had been having her argument with the Doctor as well. He kept glancing between the two of us, listening to both our arguments, though I got the feeling he didn't really care for either one. There was a crash outside and the building shook, making Pete realize the need for a decision right away. "We haven't got time to argue, the plan works, we go in. You too. _All_ of us." He looked at Rose and then at me, tempting us to argue with him.

Which, of course, we did. "No, I'm not leaving him!" Rose began angrily.

"I'm not going without her," Jackie said next, standing next to her daughter. That's how a parent should act.

I wasn't part of the family dynamic there but I couldn't just give up the argument either. "I'm just not going."

Pete groaned, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of the situation. "Oh my God, we're going."

"No, sorry, don't think so." As if I would listen to him. "I don't know you that well and I sure as hell ain't listening to you. You people wanna go, fine. At least you all know, or at least seem to know, that you have places over there. I don't. Not that I know of anyway. How do you know I don't already exist over there? Hell, I've been waiting to run into me in this universe! I probably have one of me running around over in yours and I'm pretty sure that would be bad!" It was a valid point. Though, as to whether I would run into the Arianna version of me or the Delphine version, I wasn't sure.

"I think she's got a point," Jackie agreed with me, although I was fairly certain it was only for the sake of the argument. "And I've had twenty years without you, so button it. I'm not leaving her."

Rose began to try and persuade her mother to join Pete in the other universe. As they talked, the Doctor made his way over to me, standing next to me. "I know it doesn't seem fair," he began and I knew that this wasn't going to go well. "But you would rather live in a different parallel universe than get sucked into the Void. I'm sorry."

I felt my stomach drop as I watched him pull a yellow button from his pocket. "No, Doctor, no, don't do this to me." At the same time, I watched as Pete draped one over Rose's head, but she was too busy arguing with her mother to notice until it was too late. And I had been too distracted by Rose to fight the Doctor putting one over me.

He pressed the button as I looked back up at him and, the next thing I knew, we were all standing in parallel Torchwood, empty and abandoned, minus the Doctor. "Son of a bitch!" I spat out, severely pissed off now.

"Oh no you don't," Rose grumbled under her breath, glaring down at her button just as I was. "He's not doing that to me again." Before anyone could protest, she slammed down on her button and vanished.

"Like hell I'm going to let him stuff me into this damned parallel universe." I cast a last glance at Jackie, Pete and Mickey, knowing I wouldn't see them again for a very long time. I could tell Mickey was ready to try and stop me but I pressed my own button before he could.

I reappeared in the same spot I'd been before. The Doctor was shaking Rose by the shoulders, as if trying to shake some sense into her. "Once the breach collapses, that's it. You will never be able to see her again. Your own mother!"

She tried to act calm and collected, but her voice trembled slightly. "I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."

The Doctor dropped his hands, stunned somewhat by that. He knew I had come back as well and turned to me. "No more parallel universal travel for Delphine," I groaned as I ripped the hideous yellow button from my neck and chucked it across the room. The jumping back and forth had left me feeling slightly nauseas. He seemed unsure of what to say to me to convince me to go back. I shrugged, letting out a small, sad laugh. "I don't have anyone over there, Doctor. I'm sure Jackie and Mickey would forcefully take me in and watch over me, but they aren't my people. Yeah, Mickey helped me out while I've been here but he isn't mine. And I don't have anyone over there. It isn't my world. This world isn't even my world, but at least here… Well, let's just say that, even with Torchwood out to get me, I still feel more at home here than I ever did back in my own. But here I have someone. I have my person. Besides, I hate giving up without a fight." He opened his mouth to say something but I wasn't quite done. "I don't really have anything anyway. I live in a crummy orphanage where my only friend is a nut job. Lola will get on without me if something happens. If I get sucked into the Void, then whatever. At least I'll have fought for something worthwhile. So, no, I won't be going back to Pete's World."

For the first time since I'd met the Doctor that day, he was looking at me like I was more than just a random person with a mystery. He was looking at me like I was important, like I was a person who could make my own decisions. It was then and there that I realized that I never wanted that to go away.

"So what can we do to help?" Rose asked, giving me a smile.

In its robotic voice, the computer announced, "Systems rebooted. Open access."

Caught between wanting us to be safe and having a time limit to save the world, the Doctor resigned to our way. He pointed to a computer on the other side of the room. "Those coordinates over there. Set them all at six. And hurry." He sounded almost angry but I think Rose and I both knew it was more out of worry than actual anger.

I followed Rose over to the computer to help her set the coordinates. "You came back for him, didn't you?" she asked me suddenly after a few seconds of silence.

I was more than a little surprised. I had gotten the feeling she didn't like me much, because she probably thought I was a threat to her in her relationship with the Doctor. "Yeah," was all I could really say. I couldn't give her the truth, that I had come back to travel time and space with him, because that would provoke questions we didn't have time to get into.

She didn't stop working. Even though I knew she wanted to get up and have a real conversation with me, she couldn't stop because it would offset the time line and might cause the Doctor to become suspicious. "I don't know who you are, Delphine, but you remind me of me. I can tell you care about the Doctor, and as more than just some stranger you just met who saved your life." She didn't allow me a chance to refute what she was saying. Not that she would have believed me even if I could have. "I can see it in the way you look at him. There's something in the way you look at him, like he's the most important person in your world, like he's the missing piece to your puzzle, that reminds me of the way I look at him."

I shook my head as I began to help her set the coordinates. "You're not making any sense, Rose. I'm just a girl who got poked by a Weeping Angel and sent to this universe. I've never met him before in my life." It wasn't a total lie. I hadn't actually met the Doctor in person.

"Delphine, I don't know who you are, but for some strange reason, I trust you." She stopped interacting with the computer to look me in the eyes. "I've been traveling with the Doctor long enough to know that things happen, things you don't always expect. So, I'm asking you, if something happens to me, to take care of him. If I can't be here but you are, I need you to stay by him. He can't be alone. When I met him, he was by himself. He's better now that he's had me, that he's had someone. He can't go back to being alone. So take care of him, please."

I felt my throat clench and had to fight to resist the urge to hug her, and hugging people was something I never do. I knew Rose and how she clung to the Doctor, and how hard that must have been for her to say. The fact that she was trusting me to look after the Doctor if something happened to her… To me, it felt like the highest honor in the world. "Absolutely. I'll look after him for you."

~X~

This was it. The Void was going to open. Hopefully the pull wouldn't be too strong for me to handle, but I couldn't guarantee that. My muscles had never been great and now they were just lame. I was pretty sure I couldn't carry one of those magna clamps five feet without dropping it, much less actually hold on to it. The one thing I could guarantee was that Rose would fall. I knew this had been coming the entire time but it hadn't seemed possible until just then.

On the partial bright side, Rose was the one lifting the magna clamp onto the wall, saving me the trouble of looking like a massive weakling. She pressed the magna clamp onto the wall and pressed the red button when he said to.

I had decided to "hang out" on Rose's side, horrible pun intended. While I would have loved the chance to be that close to the Doctor, I thought it was more of a practical idea to stay with Rose. One, he might have found it weird if I tried too hard to be on his side and, two, once Rose let go, there would be no one on this side. I knew that the only issue in the episode was that the lever started going down but this was real life, not a television show anymore, and I was concerned that something else would arise after the lever problem.

The Doctor looked at us with a smile, though I could tell it was mostly meant for Rose. He was bursting with joy that she had decided to stay for him, but his ego and his stubbornness wouldn't let him show it. "When it starts, just hold on tight. Shouldn't be too bad for us but the Daleks and the Cybermen are steeped in Void Stuff. Are you ready?"

Rose and I were positioned by the magna clamps. She and the Doctor were poised to pull the levers up, all the while my heart was threatening to beat out my chest. Rose glanced up at the window, not liking what she saw. "So are they."

The Daleks were flying at the window, ready to crash through and stop our termination of their plans. "Let's do it!" the Doctor yelled. He and Rose grabbed the levers and pulled them up into the on position. Immediately after the computer system gave the "Online" signal, we all wrapped our arms around our respective clamps, struggling to hold on as the Void kicked to life.

The large blank wall in front of us lit up like a star, the breach open completely. In large groups, Daleks and Cybermen were sucked into the Void, eliminated. "The breach is open! Into the Void! Ha!" I had to smile as the Doctor shouted triumphantly over the sound of the wind.

It sort of felt like what I imagined a tornado would feel like, although I have never actually been near one. It felt like my entire being was being pulled from me and threatening to be sucked into that white light. My arms hurt and begged for me to release them but I ignored the pain, refusing to let go.

The Doctor and Rose shared a smiling look, and I briefly wondered if he and I would ever have that kind of connection. My pondering was cut short, however, when sparks began to fly from the lever on our side. The smiles on their faces fell as we all watched the lever start to slide back down into the off position. "Turn it on!"

The vortex sensation was beginning to lessen and Rose hurried to try and pull the lever up, reaching her arm out to it. It was just slightly outside her arm length and she strained, trying to stretch towards it. Her arm on the magna clamp slipped off, tumbling her into the lever. My heart felt like it stopped as I watched her struggle to pull the lever up. She was finally able to pull it back into the upright position. I saw a look of dread pass over her face as she realized she had nothing to hold onto now but the lever.

"Rose, hold on!" the Doctor shouted, his face a mixture of horror and despair.

"Don't let go, Rose," I found myself pleading with her. I was vaguely surprised to feel tears in my eyes as the suction picked back up and I watched as she struggled to hold onto the lever for dear life.

Deep down, some part of me knew this was what was supposed to happen, that she had to go. But I found myself taking one arm off the clamp and reaching out to her anyway. "Grab my hand. Come on, Rose. Just grab my hand."

Desperately, she reached for me but she just couldn't quite make it. She locked eyes with me and I could read in them her silent wish, imploring me just as she had earlier to take care of the Doctor when she was gone. The Doctor yelled again for her to hold on, as I begged her not to let go. "Just a little bit longer…"

She cried out in pain as the stretching on her arms and her slippery grip on the handle became too much for her. With one last cry, her grip finally slipped. Her hands flew from the lever and she was pulled backwards towards the Void all of us screaming in desperation. The second before she hit the Void and would have been lost forever, Pete appeared. She landed in his arms, saved from the breach, and glanced back over her shoulder at the Doctor for a brief split second before Pete pressed the yellow button and they vanished. Rose was gone.

The Doctor screamed, wailing, heart broken. Not long after their departure, the Void began closing in on itself and died down. Safe from potential death, I released the magna clamp, feeling my arms protest, and sank to the floor. My body felt like it had been pulled out of shape and I felt a little sick, so I sat and waited for the feeling to dissipate. I was alive.

I took a few deep breaths and, once I was sure I wasn't going to vomit, I opened my eyes and began to stand up. "What do we do…" I trailed off when I looked around and saw that the Doctor was no longer in the room with me. "Doctor?" Where had he gone? He had been right here. Rose had left and, according to the episode, he had his moment with the Void wall.

I heard the familiar ding of an elevator opening. Rushing over to the hallway, I saw him getting into the elevator. He was leaving.

No! He was leaving! He couldn't leave. What about me?

I ran down the hallway as fast as I could but the elevator doors had closed by the time I was halfway there. He never even saw me. I had to get to him before he took the TARDIS and left me behind. But how was I supposed to get down fast enough? If I remembered correctly, his TARDIS was parked on the first floor.

Turning my head slightly, my senses finally picked up the other elevator. Luckily, it had stopped close to this floor so when I pressed the button, it only took a short moment for it to get to me. And then I was mashing the first floor button and going down.

~X~

I sprinted down the hallway once I was out of the elevator. The sound of the TARDIS was quiet and slow, which meant it hadn't gone yet. I nearly missed the door but, barefoot, I slid to a stop and rushed into the room. It was just beginning to fade. "Doctor!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, hoping and pleading with the goddamn universe for him to come back. "_Doctor_!" I don't know how many more times I yelled his name before the TARDIS disappeared and I could no longer hear the whirring sound of the engine.

Dumbfounded, I found a box near me and plopped my butt down on it. Maybe this wasn't it. This couldn't be the end. He would come back for me. He would start flying away and then it would hit him, "Oh, Delphine's still there. I should go back," and he would come back. The TARDIS would reappear and he would step outside and ask me to join him as he traveled the stars. Of course, he would still be upset because he just lost Rose but he would come back.

He had to.

And so I would sit here until he did. It almost made me laugh, a pitiful, spiteful laugh, that I could sit here in Torchwood and not worry anymore. Yvonne was the one who had wanted to kidnap me, and she was dead now. In fact, most of Torchwood London was dead. No way they were coming back for me, unless somehow they zombified themselves and came to eat my brains. Maybe now wasn't the time for jokes. Either way, I didn't have to be scared of Torchwood anymore. They were all dead or, if somehow they survived this massacre, they were now unemployed and didn't give a shit about me. The place still gave me the heebie-jeebies but if the Doctor was going to come back for me, chances are he'd look here first.

~X~

At least an hour passed before I realized he wasn't coming back. I sat for I don't even know how long on that box, staring at the space his TARDIS had been, willing him to come back for me. Until I yawned and it hit me. _He had forgotten me_.

And I started to laugh. Sadly at first but then hysterically, with tears streaming down my cheeks. How pathetic was I?

I had kept telling myself how great everything would be once I met him. Once I found the Doctor, my life would go from nothing to something. I would convince him to take me with him. Sure, he would be sad at first. After all, he had just lost Rose. He would grieve but he would be okay, and then I would be his new Rose. There would be Martha and Donna but I would be his new Rose, and they would be friends, since he never thought of them romantically anyway. It worked out in my head. But it had all been a fantasy. I had given myself unrealistic expectations of what things would be like.

I had watched enough Doctor Who to know what he was like. Sure, he liked to ask random people he saved to travel with him but it wasn't all the time. Honestly, when you thought about how many people he saved and how many he asked to go with him, it was very few people. And I had made myself believe I would be one of them, that I would be a Martha or a Donna or even an Amy. I had convinced myself I would be one in a million, that things would be different, that he would save me from a life I was trying so hard to get away from. I had been stupid. And that was no one's fault but my own.

With that realization, I knew he wasn't coming back for me. I hopped up off my box, and left Torchwood London forever.

~X~

The orphanage was surprised to say the least when I showed back up that late afternoon. They had asked me question after question about what had happened and where I had been, but it was Lola who had seen that I couldn't handle it right then and there. She got them to leave me alone and I went upstairs to our room, changed into my pajamas, and went to bed. I slept for hours.

It was almost three in the morning when a familiar noise pierced my sleep. It sounded just like the half whirring, half wheezing sound the TARDIS made. I cursed myself for dreaming about the stupid ship and rolled over to go back to sleep.

Not two minutes after the sound vanished from my mind, I heard something on the window by my bed. "Damn birds…" I muttered under my breath, refusing to get up. When I heard it another two times, I finally got fed up enough to look out the window. What I saw outside took my breath away.

I hadn't been dreaming. The TARDIS was actually outside my building, and the Doctor was standing below my window, chucking pebbles at it. He saw me looking and gave me a small wave, mouthing something. I was terrible at reading lips but I could only assume he was telling me to go talk to him.

I ran to the bedroom door and stopped. I couldn't go down looking like this, could I? I looked terrible, though I hadn't actually seen myself. But I could tell that I was grimy and I probably looked like a lion had chewed me up and spit me back out. Plus, I was wearing my pajamas, which only consisted of a short black tank top that didn't fully cover my stomach and a pair of teal shorts. When you were an orphan, you took what you could get, and these were comfy.

I wanted to look decent. But did I really have time? I had no way of knowing that he wouldn't take off if I made him wait for too long. He might assume that I wasn't coming down.

Making the decision to stay as I was, I went back to my bed to throw my dog slippers on over my bare feet and grab my stuffed black dog off my bed. Yes, I had a stuffed black dog. Her name was Cookie, just like the one I had in my home universe. I still have her to this day. She's special, and I never went anywhere I knew I would be sleeping without her. I knew it looked silly but I didn't really care.

I moved quickly and quietly through the orphanage, trying not to wake anyone and explain what I was doing. Once outside, I stood in front of the Doctor, who looked the same as earlier.

He had parked under a poorly lit street light. He took a look at the stuffed dog in my arm and gave me a strange look, but must have decided it wasn't weird enough to ask about yet. "You're a very interesting person, Delphine Greentree," he stated before I could say anything. "Can you tell me what happened to you?"

I was pretty sure he wasn't talking about Torchwood, since he already knew about that, so the only other thing he could mean was how I got here. "My name was Arianna Grey. I lived in New Jersey, in America, in a shitty little town named Middlesex." His eyebrow rose at the name of my town but he didn't interrupt. "I was walking to work one day and had to take a detour. I saw a statue, thought it looked strange, and when I kept walking. I turned to look back at it, but it wasn't there. Turned around to keep walking, and it was in my face. I thought it was some sort of prank, because what kind of statue moves? So, I looked around for my friend and next thing I know, I'm here. I don't even look the same. Then, Torchwood hijacked me and here we are."

"I looked you up," he said after I finished talking. His expression never changed, remaining blank with a hint of curiosity. "You appeared here, out of nowhere, ten years ago. Sounds to me like a Weeping Angel found you. Must have slipped through a gap in the time stream and wound up in your world." His eyes never left my face, and the fact that he was staring at me so intensely made me slightly uncomfortable. I felt like I was under scrutiny, which I probably was by the Doctor's standards. "No one knew who you were. You had no memories of what had happened to you. All you knew was your first name, Delphine. A girl found you, Lola, and brought you to the orphanage she lived at. You were dubbed Delphine Greentree, where you were estimated to be six years old at the time. Shortly after that, you made a life of crime being a petty thief stealing wallets, and I want my psychic paper back by the way, and an assortment of odd items." His face took on a look of frustration, like he had been trying to figure me out for hours with no success. Is that what he'd been doing while I slept? "But it's all very strange. You're nothing special. You don't look special, don't act special. In fact, you act like an angry teenager, yelling and cursing when things don't go your way, which is very tacky, but very average. By all accounts, you're just an average girl who came across some weird circumstances. But you don't exist." He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket next and pointed it at me, scanning me briefly. Pulling it away, he looked at some results and frowned. "According to everything, you shouldn't exist. Even my sonic screwdriver agrees. By all means, you shouldn't be here. Yet, you are, and you exist, because I can touch you."

He was being kind of a jerk, telling me I wasn't special at all and that I was more than average. The normal Doctor went on for days about how special each individual person was and yet, here he was telling me how un-special I was. But I forced myself to let it go because I knew it was only because he was upset. Instead, I took the heat off of me by turning it on him. "And what about you, Mister Man of Wonder? You with all your scientific knowledge and your blue box. You're an alien."

The Doctor was taken back slightly by my statement, probably expecting it to come out as a question. "Yes, I am. My name is the Doctor, and I'm called a Time Lord. I have two hearts and fly this blue box, called the TARDIS. It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, which means I can travel through all of time and space. I am the last of my kind." He gave me a moment for the info to sink in, which I already knew all of this so it took no time at all, and continued on. "You could come with me. I can help you figure out who you are, or what you are. It might take some time, but you could come with me."

Holy crap, did he just ask me to be his new companion? I almost squealed, but I didn't because that would have been weird. "You mean it?" I asked in disbelief, my voice slightly higher than I expected. "You want me to…" I had to stop because a wave of relief suddenly flooded over me. "I thought you weren't coming back for me. You disappeared and I waited, but you never came. I thought you were going to leave me behind and you would just be another person who forgot about me, just like my parents did and just like everyone here did when I vanished. I thought you forgot about me…" I could feel the tears in my eyes but I willed myself not to cry. Crying would be lame, and I definitely did not want the Doctor's first memory of me as his companion to be me crying over something stupid.

The hard look on his face changed to something softer and he put his hand on my head. Something told me that he knew I wanted to cry, even though I was pretty sure he couldn't see it in this poorly lit area. "I shouldn't have left you there by yourself. I'm so sorry, Delphine."

I gave him the best smile I could muster. "I understand, Doctor, it's okay. You're going through a rough time, just like me, and you needed some alone time. So I understand. You don't have to apologize."

The tension between us melted away and a smile returned to his face. It wasn't the usual grin he wore but it was something. Glancing down at the toy in my arms, he finally decided to ask, "Why in the world are you carrying a stuffed dog?"

As much as I loved the Doctor, there were just some things I wasn't ready to tell him about me yet. "None of your business."

"Suit yourself." Turning to his TARDIS, he pushed the door open and gestured for me to walk inside.

The TARDIS was so much more phenomenal than I could have imagined. Seeing it on television is nothing compared to seeing it for real. The console was there, with the tube in the center that stretched to the ceiling, and the little tubes inside it that moved up and down when the ship was in motion. The coat rack stood near the doorway and the several coral pillars stood extravagant throughout the room. Turning around, I found the Doctor watching me expectantly. "It's bigger on the inside." I had to give it to him.

As he moved closer to me, I watched the slight happiness on his face melt into one of his sad, steely gazes as his eyes rolled over me, now that I was standing in the light. I knew what he was looking at. "Your ship, this TARDIS, is amazing. How big is it?"

My attempt at distracting him didn't work. Taking my arm in his hand, he used his other hand to trace some of the scars and bruises going down it. "You should go to the kitchen and get something to eat, but you should take it easy on what you consume. After that, I should take you down to the medical bay."

I gave him my best "what the fuck?" face and snorted. "What the hell are you talking about, Doctor?" I asked defensively, pulling my arm away from him. Hugging my dog closer to my chest, I shook my head. "Kitchen? Med bay? Sure, I'm a little hungry but who wouldn't be after the crap Torchwood was feeding me? I don't need to go to any medical bay. I know I have a few bruises and scars but it's nothing too bad. You're being silly."

A look of understanding passed over his face as he watched my reaction. "Delphine…" he began, but stopped. Glancing up to the door at back of the room, he put his hand lightly on my back and turned me around. "Why don't you come with me? I have something I think you should see."

"Um… okay?" Not having much of a choice, I let him direct me through the door and a little ways down the hall.

We passed by a few doors but we didn't open any of them. We turned a corner and he stopped. I saw what he had been leading me to; a full length mirror hanging on the wall. "Doctor, I don't need to-"

"Just look." His voice was soft and gentle as he gave me a nudge towards it.

I couldn't explain why, but I was scared. It had been a month and a half since I had seen myself. Torchwood had never given me mirrors to look into. I was lucky if I passed by a piece of metal that was even remotely reflective. All I'd had to go by was the fact that I could tell my hair was getting a bit longer and the pain in the places they cut me.

Part of my brain told me not to look, that I could get by without seeing myself and I would fix myself later, and the other part told me that I had to see. Looking to the Doctor, he nodded, telling me to go for it.

Ignoring the part of my brain that was against it, I moved to stand in front of the mirror. What I saw reflected back at me was appalling. Torchwood had taken a harder toll on me that I had thought.

My naturally ivory skin had gone disastrously pale, so much that almost all of my veins were noticeable and I looked like a ghost. My hair had grown past my shoulder blades and it was greasy, dull, and lifeless; my turquoise coloring in the front had grown out with my hair so that my roots were coming in and the color had begun to fade. I had known about the bruises, but seeing them in the mirror made them look so much worse than I had realized. Large black and purple ones surrounded my wrists and ankles and hand shaped ones covered different areas up and down my arms. They throbbed in time with my heart beat, but I guess I had been too busy to notice how much pain they were causing me.

I had lost a lot of weight as well, from poor nutrition and stress. Delphine's body had always been skinny, from living in an orphanage and eating rather poorly most of the time, but now I was practically emaciated. My legs and arms were bonier than I had ever seen and, when I put my hands up to my stomach, I could feel my ribs protruding harshly. Deep black circles were evident under my eyes from the lack of sleep I had with all the experiments. Running my hands over my arms, legs, torso and neck, I found scars that I hadn't even known were there.

Suddenly, my head began to spin and I couldn't see straight. The mirror lost focus and I was vaguely aware of the stuffed animal leaving my arms and the Doctor calling my name as darkness enveloped my sight. I couldn't think anymore.


	3. Apology

Dear readers,

I don't know how many of you still keep up with this story. I lost track of it a long time ago, a little less than a year ago, though it seems like so much longer than that. I had ideas of getting back to it recently but that isn't going to happen now.

I'm leaving Fanfiction, for good pretty much. I'm posting letters like this on all of my stories. I love Fanfiction dearly and all of my amazing readers but my life has become too complicated and too busy for this right now. My mom has come down with cancer and I'm not sure how much longer she's going to be around. Fanfiction requires too much of my time and right now that time is better spent with my mom.

I never wanted to leave Fanfiction and I've always had so much fun writing them. I had so many ideas for all my stories and it was never my intention to leave any of them behind. I was even in the process of creating a new one when the decision hit me. But for all the time I spend writing my fics, it's time that I could be spending with my mom, and time that I won't have in the case something happens to her. So I have to leave, even though I have mixed feelings about it. I might be back someday; I might not. There's a good chance I'll use my absence from Fanfiction to start back up on some of my original fiction that I let go of because Fanfiction consumed my life.

But, on a brighter side, Dying Light is being adopted by a friend called I'msorrymylove. They assure me that they're going to do everything they can to make this story great, maybe even better than what it would have been under me. I sent them all the information on the story and I'm eager to see how it pans out under new authorship. I don't know how soon the story will go up but look forward to seeing it by I'msorrymylove.

Again, I'm so sorry everyone. But my life and my mother come first, before my love of Fanfiction.

Farewell,

Moonchild2308


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